Having an active blog posts page as a part of your website is directly linked to the success of your business’ marketing efforts. So it’s important to invest in a dynamic blog that will promote and support those business efforts. Without a blog, your business will most likely experience a number of issues such as inferior search engine optimisation (SEO), lack of content for your social media channels, not enough authority with your leads and clients and fewer opportunities to add prompts and calls to action (CTA).
Before we dive into the technical aspects of what having a blog means for your business, let’s first answer the question of what a blog post is.
What is a blog post?
A blog post enables your business to publish insights, thoughts and even narratives on your website about virtually any topic, helping you to boost traffic, brand awareness, authority and credibility, conversions and ultimately, revenue.
Below are 6 of the most popular blog post topics currently:
- The How-To post
- The List-Based post
- The What Is post
- The Pillar Page post
- The Newsjacking post
- The Infographic post
So what makes for a good blog post and how can you make sure that it catches the attention of your ideal target audience?
What makes a good blog post?
Firstly, a good blog post should be interesting and educational. The post should be able to answer questions and help readers to resolve a problem that they may be experiencing in a creative and engaging way. The post should also provide useful, actionable steps.
A good blog post should also take into account and speak directly to a clear target audience. Creating buyer personas helps to give blog posts direction and allows for relevant and interesting topics. When creating your buyer personas, consider what you know about your existing customers and draw off of that.
Types of blog posts that are most effective
- List or Listicle (5 ways to bake bread)
- Curated Collection (10 essential baking tools you need right now)
- Slide Share Presentation (5 types of mixers to get the job done right (with pictures))
- News Piece (New research reveals that eating bread is key to a balanced diet)
These types of content paired with relevant images are likely to receive more views than those without. Formatting is just as important as the correct image. A blog post should always look tidy and attractive. No one wants to read a post that is all over the place. Maintaining this consistency makes for content that appears more professional and is easy to read.
Blog posts help your website’s SEO ranking
Adding a meta description to each blog post provides searchers with a helpful summary of what the post is about before they click on it. Meta descriptions are the descriptions found below the post’s page title on Google’s search results page. Doing this will help to improve your click-through rate from search engines.
Make sure that your website is optimised for mobile with a responsive design so that visitors who view your site on mobile have a good experience when they visit your blog page. Optimising for mobile will help to improve your SEO ranking.
Search engines also take into account the value of your website, in other words, what valuable content do you offer to searchers? They look at expertise, authority and trustworthiness as part of their ranking system. Having an active blog allows you the opportunity to showcase your skills and knowledge and proves that the content on your website really does offer valuable helpful information.
Blogging was used mostly by people who enjoyed posting about their lives back in the day, but not anymore. Today, businesses of all sizes use it strategically to gain traffic, grow their following and improve their visibility in search engines.
If you believe it’s time for your business to experience the full benefits of blogging, then jump on the blogging bandwagon and get in contact with us by either filling out our contact form or emailing us at: janine@themustardflower.co.za
